Frain Industries Digital Marketing
Website Development - Video & Photo - Collateral Design - Content Strategy
Frain Industries is a clear leader when it comes to packaging and processing machinery. But as their business model was changing for the better, they needed to thoughtfully inform their customers.
Frain Filled a Niche; Resound Helped Them Tell Everyone About It
After thirty years of selling and renting used machinery to food, beverage, and consumer packaged goods manufacturers, Frain Industries decided to make a differentiating change to better serve their customers.
They saw that simply handing off complex equipment to their customers wasn’t the best solution. Without integration, testing, and fast installation, having a used machine dropped off at the doorstep was as helpful as a new car... without wheels. They also were good and tired of having to convince customers that the machine they found on google wasn’t the best choice for their product, assembly line, or production goals.
It was enough of the old churn and burn.
Bringing their highly qualified engineers and technicians off the sidelines, Frain transitioned from renting used machines to full service design, consulting, upkeep and custom installation. With the ultimate goal of helping their customers get products to shelves with a faster turnaround, Frain looked for ways to go the extra mile.
From designing custom assembly lines to troubleshooting problems, and even flying their mechanics out to maintain machines they’ve built, Frain was now in the business of providing exactly what their customers needed… everything from ‘soup to nuts.’
Turns out, their customers love it.
But with an outdated website that only showed their enormous inventory of 8,000+ machines, and with the calls from people convinced they’d found the right machine on google still coming in, Frain needed some help letting everyone know about their remarkable one-eighty.
Telling the CPG World
When the Resound team came out to Chicagoland to meet with Frain, take pictures, and shoot some videos, they were floored by what they saw. Ninety employees and fifty technicians knew their way around a 2 million square foot facility filled with gleaming, whirring machines and assembly lines.
These guys were locked and loaded…they knew their stuff all right.
But did all of their customers know that Frain offered much more than used machinery?
While Frain had already done the hard work of figuring out exactly what they wanted to do, Resound jumped right in to help the company communicate its values, service, and finely tuned frequency to everyone around them.
Working with an experienced, successful, and large-scale company was already a plus. And with the goals of developing videos, a full digital and print catalogue, an email campaign, and redeveloping and re-launching a custom website, the Resound team began a solid partnership with one of their longest running clients.
A Healthy Online Overhaul
First and foremost, the Resound team put their shoulders into re-designing, overhauling, and customizing Frain’s website. The effort included building easy-to-navigate pages for a wide range of manufacturing equipment categories and services, and clarifying a somewhat vague message to a specific action step—telling Frain what you need and letting the experts take it from there.
A key part of Frain’s communication, Resound focused on making the website show that Frain had transitioned from used-machine sales and rentals to consulting, design, and the flexible, full-service installation its customers needed for fast, reliable results.
The task pushed Resound to stretch its abilities in organization, web design, and content strategy. Eager customers went from browsing a bulky index of hundreds of machines to a sleek, eye-catching layout that guides them toward Frain’s services based on what they really need.
As a multi-year project, the website brought Resound and Frain closer together, helping the Frain team fine-tune its message: they provide solutions, and get products moving as fast as possible. Both companies celebrated a milestone with the website’s 2021 launch.
Custom Deliverables
With hundreds of pictures of Frain’s facility, machines, and assembly lines, the team left Illinois with everything they needed to get started on a custom processing catalogue for Frain’s machines and services.
But unlike the old website, which laid out dozens of machines without much rhyme or reason, this neat, glossy print and digital catalogue organized everything, (from blenders and emulsifiers to stainless steel sifters) into a clean, easy-to-find layout. Here, again, the focus was on showing Frain’s wide ability to meet business needs by creating customs, rather than by just renting out machinery.
Show, Don't just Tell
The video footage from Frain’s facility provided splendid shots for a whole series of short, informative videos aimed at communicating the company’s ‘Plug and Play’ approach to designing custom lines and getting things up and running. Shooting in Resound’s own studio, and bringing in local talent Phoenix, Arizona, Resound eventually completed more than 125 videos showing Frain’s custom lines, opportunities, and full service offerings.
Revamped Email Marketing
While Resound worked hard on revamping Frain’s look and website with videos and photography, they also got to work on another way to get the word out—Frain’s massive list of more than 30,000 email subscribers.
After sorting through the bots, dead clicks and trails to nowhere, the Resound team shaped Frain’s online presence into an effective, ongoing campaign of social media and email blasts. The communication garnered new business, but more importantly, it helped Frain advertise its new, speedy services during the sky-high demand of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Knowing that manufacturing companies desperately needed machines for soap and hand-sanitizer, the email and social campaign helped Frain meet a gaping need in the country’s supply chain for vital products.
Plug and Play into the Future
Today, and with a total design overhaul that communicates their resources, services, and wide range of equipment offerings, Frain continues to partner Resound.
What began as a total restructuring of how Frain’s customers ingest information, search for what they need, and go to Frain's team of engineers for help continues as a splendid partnership. Like an energized basketball coach guiding his team through the action, Resound couldn’t be happier to be right there at Frain’s side...helping the world see how remarkable they are.